New to the forum, and oh my, what a forum it is. I haven't been a lurker at all. I became interested in the Ripper murders and would like to simply explore some aspects of the case.

First off, I don't believe anyone knows or has shown the true identity of the Ripper, and I doubt very much that anyone will. Having said that, there are aspects of the Ripper we can surmise through his modus, and other little aspects which state something about his character.

I don't expect to add any new insight that has not already been thought of before. After all, 128 years have passed and every man and his dog has had something to say about the murders.

With my interest there is also sadness for the five women butchered, especially Mary Jane Kelly, who was literally ripped apart and destroyed, bearing the savage and contemptuous ferocity with which she was killed. It seems that with MJK the Ripper finally satiated his need to kill women, and then simply walked into the mists of historical infamy, taking with him the rhyme and reason of his motive for the ten weeks of terror he brought to Whitechapel.

I certainly, at this point, do not accept any conspiratorial theories that he either died, or was placed in some asylum. I think the best thinking is that he was a foreigner, here only briefly, and then went back to whichever land he came from. It would be interesting to know what ships docked and who was on the manifest throughout 1888?

From Mary Nichols to Mary Kelly, the Ripper exceeded each kill with greater destruction, almost as if he was searching for a particular organ, as if harvesting them for a particular purpose? The destruction was purposeful as I think it destroyed evidence of his skill set, but at the same time, it hinted at what skills he had.

The Ripper was obviously an intelligent man, assiduous, determined, and not without a sense of irony. He tore into Annie Chapman, but left her worthless little belongings neatly lined up on the floor (why not just toss them aside like he did the innards of the women...it shows a thoughtful pause during moments of a preciously short time schedule?).

Of course, two of the most curious aspects of the murders is that of silence and of the lack of blood for those victims found on the street. No one heard anything! Where was the arterial spray from the throat cuts?

In order to prohibit arterial spray, he would have had to have succumbed the victims in some way before he made cuts to the throat. A panicking women fearing for her life would have a very high heart rate with blood pressure through the roof. If he had asphyxiated his victims (bringing the heart rate to a stop and blood pressure down), the cuts to the throat might have been to hide the evidence of strangulation in some way. Apart from Stride and Kelly, I think the other victims were killed elsewhere and dumped where they were found after he had finished with them, hence the reason why they were still clothed, they clothing kept the blood in and the body held together for transportation.

I note that the London Hospital was a street or so away from where the first victim Mary Nichols was found. I can't help feeling that this institution played some part in the killings.